


like steel wool

by erzi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 07:32:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19268641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: Shuuichi lingers on Seiji's profile, self-assured as only a teenager born to fortune and fate like him can be. He wouldn't describe him as 'pretty' - that brings to mind fragile things with demure voices and powdered hands. Seiji's voice carries, demanding and receiving attention, and he wields his hand-whittled bow between his calluses with grace. No, Seiji is... refined. Confident and refined. Shuuichi cannot look away from him, today like past days.





	like steel wool

The wild grass bends softly beneath Shuuichi. His body makes a lonely imprint on this rolling hill, ripe with only nature. No people, no youkai. It's just him amid the cool earth, the swaying grass, the early-autumn sun. The sky, colored the sweetest blue, sweeps over him in a half-sphere stretching so far wide and so high up it dizzies him. He closes his eyes.

And he hears the rustle of something moving through the grass. It's a leisurely movement, and it is nearing him. This is a lovely little spot to rest in, and it isn't surprising another has found their way here. Shuuichi keeps his eyes closed as to not invite the stranger to conversation.

The grass crunches crisply right by his ear, and he barely keeps his startlement away. He feels the stranger leave a grass blade's worth of distance between them.

"Did you hide from me on purpose, Shuuichi-san?" they ask, and Shuuichi immediately opens his eyes to see Seiji, also in his school uniform, looking down at him with an amused smile.

Shuuichi now tries to keep a smile away, but he is not successful at it. "No. I forgot we were going to practice today."

Seiji sits down beside him. "But you remembered to come to some hill to nap?"

"It's a nice day."

Seiji lays a hand on the grass, leaning his weight on it. He turns his head up to the sky, shaggy hair fluttering lazily about him. "That it is."

Shuuichi lingers on Seiji's profile, self-assured as only a teenager born to fortune and fate like him can be. He wouldn't describe him as 'pretty' - that brings to mind fragile things with demure voices and powdered hands. Seiji's voice carries, demanding and receiving attention, and he wields his hand-whittled bow between his calluses with grace. No, Seiji is... refined. Confident and refined. Shuuichi cannot look away from him, today like past days.

Aware of his thoughts, he shifts his hands cradling the back of his head. "How did you find me?"

"I asked someone from your school if they'd seen you. They saw you heading in this direction. From there, it was just searching. But it wasn't difficult to deduce you'd want to be here. It's somehow like you, even if you did bail on me." Seiji turns back to Shuuichi, flicking him on the forehead. "I'll begrudgingly forgive you this time."

Shuuichi uncrosses his arms from behind his head to rub the spot Shuuichi had flicked. He pouts. "Fine, but you didn't need to do that."

"That wasn't painful. This is," Seiji says, darting out a hand to punch or hit or do _something_ to Shuuichi, but he anticipates it and wraps his hand around Seiji's wrist, swiveling his arm away from him with Seiji's own momentum.

He grins. "I'm getting used to you. You need to learn more tricks, Seiji. Or just don't be an asshole." He lets him go.

Seiji laughs, resting his freed hand back on the grass. The one closest to Shuuichi has not yet moved, keeping itself so close yet so far from him.

The breeze sibilant on the hill fills in the silence. It's enjoyable, but something in Shuuichi tells him it is their voices that should fill this open space. Or maybe he just wants it so.

That's probably it.

"Hey," he says, unsure of what it is he'll say, unable to ignore the itch in his chest.

"Hmm?"

A genuine question comes to him then. "Are we not practicing today, then?"

Seiji considers it. "No. We can skip a day and be fine. You've been making excellent progress." He glances at Shuuichi from the corner of his eye. It's dark as obsidian and could be just as sharp; those eyes of his could cut deep if he tried. Whatever edge he could polish them to does not exist, though. It is only a glance, but its fondness and pride will stay with Shuuichi for years to come. "You'll be an incredible exorcist, Shuuichi-san. Not many have your inherent power or quickness to learn. In a few years, you might rival me."

Shuuichi is lying down, but it feels like he's gotten up, and too quickly at that. "Really?"

"Am I one to lie?"

"But you're so talented. You've basically been at this since birth." He tugs his rumpled white shirt. "I can't be that good. That wouldn't even be fair to you."

"I said you _might_ rival me," Seiji says, smugness stretching out his smile. "I'm still better than you."

His hand stills. His lip turns down. "You did say that, huh."

"Yes, because no one else comes close to me," Seiji says, and two of his fingertips flit to the pulse point at Shuuichi's wrist. "No one except you, Shuuichi-san."

At his touch, Shuuichi's heartbeat goes up, its nervous pattern more nervous yet because Seiji can feel his undoing. He surely must know he's the cause.

Seiji bends over him, blocking out the sun now gold around his hair, a crown bestowed upon him by the gods themselves. "Do you understand what I'm telling you?" he asks Shuuichi in a voice softer than the breeze. "You have the potential to be the second-greatest living exorcist. Imagine what we could be together."

It comes as sudden as a dream, but seems far more real than that: he and Seiji, traveling around the country to vanquish youkai, paper and incantations for himself while Seiji kept to his bow, but always together. Through the years, in the uniqueness of their gifts, together.

That wisp of a future vanishes. Shuuichi looks upon Seiji's shadowed face close enough for his silent exhales to skim his skin. He looks upon his face as he feels Seiji's fingers trace his veins up his arm. He looks upon his face to brush a stray lock behind Seiji's ear, keeping his hand curled at his cheek. And he looks upon his face to know its features close-eyed as he pulls him in to a kiss.

It's not _really_ a kiss. It's his mouth, taut, pressed clumsily to Seiji's. Their noses bump, and a snicker forms in Seiji's throat. Shuuichi, annoyed by that, tilts his head, his mouth at an angle to Seiji's, his insistence rougher. He doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't know if Seiji likes it. But he does know this is something they've been needing to do.

Seiji is the one who draws back – minutely so, the ends of his choppy hair tickling Shuuichi. His lip quirks up. "We have something else to practice now."

Shuuichi feels a flush coming. "I've never kissed anyone before!"

Seiji flops down on his side, next to him. "Yes, I could tell."

He's open-mouthed in riled speechlessness. When has Seiji kissed anyone? Who was it? Why didn't he know?

"Don't give me that look, Shuuichi-san," Seiji says, laughing. "No one has ever had a good first kiss."

"Except you, apparently." He huffs, hoping some of the heat on his face dissipates with it. "Sorry I couldn't live up to whoever."

"That was my first kiss, too."

Shuuichi blinks, the ghost of the sun dancing behind his eyelids. He turns to Seiji. "Then what are you being a jerk for?!"

"It was just the truth." He touches his bottom lip. "It not being very good is to be expected." He smiles and it reaches his eyes, it crinkles the sides of his mouth, and Shuuichi's agitation is utterly doused. "But it's certainly memorable. It felt a bit like steel wool."

Shuuichi self-consciously touches his mouth. "I didn't think my lips were that chapped..."

"It's not really that. It just felt weird. I'm not used to kissing and neither are you, so it felt weird, like steel wool does."

"Oh." It's far from a compliment, but it doesn't feel like an insult, either. It's just, as Seiji said, the truth.

"What's weirder is I didn't hate it." He knees Shuuichi's leg. "I meant what I said about practicing it."

Shuuichi all but splutters, "Practicing kissing?!"

"Sure. It's not going to get better unless we try. Like all things." A hand on Shuuichi's chest, over his heart; a smile that hits it the same. "I get the feeling you'd be good at it, too."

He looks away, heat returning to his face. "If you'd like to, then yeah, we can- we can kiss again."

"You're acting as if I was the one who kissed you and not the other way around."

He whips his head to him, a retort in the tip of his tongue shushed by Seiji's finger.

"It's fine," Seiji says, smile wider. "Your tendency to get flustered at what I say is part of what makes you so endearing, Shuuichi-san. Especially because you're the older one here. It never feels that way, does it?"

" _Seiji_ ," he says: a warning, a protest, a wish all at once.

"Maybe next time," Seiji continues, using Shuuichi's bony shoulder like a pillow, "I'll really be the one who kisses you."

'Next time,' he says. Next time they meet so Shuuichi can delve deeper into Seiji's supernatural world bound to his; next time they meet so they can simply be together, then like the future they're forging.

Slow as the clouds overhead, he moves a hand to cover Seiji's on his chest – hesitant at first, but a sureness of this moment soon overtakes him, and he fits his fingers between Seiji's.

"Next time," he affirms.

**Author's Note:**

> it's funny bc they're cute now and then u look at their current state in canon and u die! did i say funny i meant soul-crushing


End file.
